Heliopolis Camping & Village

For a quick intro to the local area, you could hike an hour down the coast, or drive 10 minutes to La Torre di Cerrano, a sea-facing watchtower dating back to the 16th century. It’s thought that the ancient port of Hadria lies somewhere underneath the waters here; today, like the dunes and pine forests around the tower, they’re full of protected wildlife. Inland, it’s a 20-minute drive to hilltop Atri, a settlement since Iron Age times with a Roman cemetery and a pair of good museums explaining the town’s Etruscan past. Just outside, the Calanchi di Atri Regional Nature Reserve is an unusual landscape of peaks and cones where hikers share the high spaces with snakes, scops owls, kestrels and falcons.